The Thunder Man and I
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Bookverse. How would the same story sound from Weena's point of view?


The Thunder Man and I

By Laura Schiller

Based on H. G. Wells' _The Time Machine_

Copyright: Public Domain

We called him the Thunder Man. We don't know who he was or what he wanted, but he came with a flash and a bang like thunder, and when we asked him where he came from, he pointed to the sky. Also, his voice was deep and harsh like the rumble of the clouds when it rains – not because he wanted to frighten us, I think, but because he couldn't help it, just as the clouds can't.

Besides, I like thunderstorms. They are noisy, but they never hurt anyone, and the rain is soft. Like his hand brushing away my tears.

Some of us were frightened, though, at first. Like the weather, we didn't know what the Thunder Man would do next. When his "machine" – that's what he called it, the sparkling chair thing he was sitting on when he came – was taken, he screamed and ran around like an enormous angry child, then the next day he was as calm as if that had never happened. He kept after us about our language, following us around, asking question after question until our heads hurt. He once dragged my friend Caden up to a Dark Hole, shouted at him, and shook him. Caden kept on shaking even after he was let go, like a leaf in the wind. "He wanted to throw me in," he said to anyone who would listen. But I didn't believe him. The Thunder Man was too loud and clumsy to be dangerous. The things that live in the Dark are quiet.

Later, when I asked the Thunder Man why he did that, he said, "I want to know."

That was the difference between him and us. He was afraid of the Dark too, but he went into it anyway. Because he wanted to know.

Maybe that's why he was the one to save me.

I knew the river was dangerous. Only the strongest of us swim there, the ones with more energy than they know what to do with, the ones who don't really fit. If you're not careful, the water can sweep you away and drag you down. I saw it happen to my parents when I was small. My mother jumped in after my father and tried to pull him out. He pulled her down instead.

The others held me back.

"Don't fight what you can't change," they told me. "The river is stronger than you. You would only make it harder." And when they said the river, I know they meant the Darkness too.

I saw their point. But I still kept swimming. Maybe I wanted to be stronger than the river, after all.

Of course I wasn't. I swam too hard and too fast, and my leg started to scream with pain so I couldn't move. The water took hold of me and dragged me away from my friends. I screamed and thrashed, but there was nothing I could do. Nothing the others could do either, if they didn't want to follow me.

Then the Thunder Man waded in with his long legs and scooped me up like a pearapple from a bowl.

It was so _easy_ for him. And he didn't even know me. My own brothers and sisters were too afraid to help me, but this bizarre stranger wasn't. He knew what to do. He rubbed the feeling back into my leg, wrapped his coat around me for warmth, and made sure the others saw I was all right. I looked up at him, and it was like looking right into the white-hot sun.

I wanted to be him. Failing that, I wanted to be with him for the rest of our days.

I don't believe he felt the same way. He used to get annoyed with me for following him, and even leave me stranded by myself if I couldn't keep up. I always found my way home while it was still light, but it was sometimes a near miss. He didn't understand. But he always smiled to see me when he came back, and he wanted to know – as I said – everything about us, the words we used, the way we lived. He spent long tracks of the sun sitting with me, repeating the words I said, sounding like his mouth was full of seeds, laughing at his mistakes when I pointed them out. For a Thunder Man, he had such a nice bright laugh. I really think he liked me, in his way. That's why I kept filling the holes in his clothes with my namesake flower. I'm not sure he understood, but it was my way of showing everyone he was mine.

"Stay away from him. He's not safe," said Caden.

I said, "He saved my life."

"Are you going to mate with him?" said Liana, giggling. "He's so huge! You'd have babies bigger than you – if he didn't split your petals open first!"

I rolled my eyes at her like I'd seen him do. (I _did_ ask him to mate once, but he blushed and choked as if he'd swallowed a peacharine pit, and we never talked about it again. Maybe Liana was right, and his stem was too big. Oh, well.)

"Better you than me," said Wayan. "He's so stupid."

"_You're_ stupid if you think so," I said. "He can't speak properly, it's true, but you wouldn't believe how fast he learns. Talk to him and you'll see."

But most of them wouldn't talk to him, and they only talked to me when I wasn't with him. Sometimes I heard them whispering about me behind my back. Caden dropped my hand during the Strawcherry Blossom Dance, and that hurt. But I knew why they did it - they still remembered the Thunder Man poking around the Dark Holes.

They had a point. He was dangerously reckless about them, even for a stranger who didn't know what they were. The first time he climbed down into one, I thought he would never come back out. I begged him not to, I clung to him with my hands, but he brushed me off like dirt. As the Darkness took him, I thought I might burst into pieces, like a rotten tomango when you throw it. How could I go on living if I lost him?

How do I explain it? I was sad when I lost my parents, very sad, for a while. But I had other family to sing and dance with me, swim, weave flowers, tell stories and sleep beside me. I hear my mother's laugh in Liana's voice, and Caden scolds me like my father used to do. We are all so much alike. But the Thunder Man is not like anyone else. If he were taken, there would be an emptiness in my world that nobody could fill.

I stayed by the Dark Hole until the sun touched the trees, no matter how my friends pleaded with me to get away. I would have let the Darkness take me, as long as it took me to him.

When he came back out – dirty, wild-eyed and shaking, but _safe_ – I kissed him for joy.

That day changed us both. He became less likely to roll his eyes at me, or tell me I was silly, or sleep outside alone in spite of my warnings. I decided to never let him leave me behind again, no matter how frightened I might be. I was weak, but he made me want to be stronger.

I will never forget the day he took me to the big green house. It was the best day of my life, and the worst day too.

He took me farther from home than I had ever been before, my Thunder Man. He really was ridiculously strong; he could keep going and going ages after anyone else would have dropped. He carried me on one shoulder most of the way. Everything looked so funny from up there, squirrelbunnies as small as butterflies, sparrowjays flying almost close enough to touch. His skin was warm. When we reached the green house, the sun was in the middle of the sky, but it felt like no time at all.

He was looking for what he called, in his strange sharp language, "weapons". Things that could keep away the Morlocks – yes, he called them by name, not even whispering, and tried to make me do the same – next time they came for us. That should have warned me, but it didn't. I really believed nothing could harm him, or me, as long as we were together. I almost _wanted _to watch him hurt them, as horrible as that sounds. We had all been afraid of them so long, it seemed only right that they should be afraid of us this once.

The green house was a breathtaking place. Bones wider than my waist, carvings that looked like people mixed with animals, beautiful dots and curves that the Thunder Man said held the stories of people long gone – how is that possible? Why don't we have that anymore? The stories we tell about the past, are they still true, or are they twisted and shrunk like the dead animals in glass jars the Thunder Man showed me? He said it was my own people long ago, older than my parents' parents, who built this place. But how did we build the smooth green walls so high, how did we find the bones and put them back together? How did we think up those markings, and why, _why_ did we forget?

Most of all, could we get any of it back someday, or was it lost forever?

Thankfully, we forgot about the markings when he found the box of light sticks. He carried one like it, but he'd used up almost all the sticks for me, to make me smile, because they were so wonderful. They shone with a warm, flickery red-golden light, just like tiny suns, and there is nothing like sunlight for driving away darkness. He was proud of himself. I was too.

"Dance," he called, and I went through a perfect Sunrise Dance for him, every step right even without the music. He was a terrible dancer, he flapped around like a newly hatched chick, but I liked it better than the most graceful pattern ever stepped. We laughed so hard, and he took my hands and spun me around until I was dizzy. I never, never wanted it to stop.

Should I have snatched the box from his hand? Should I have soaked it in water or thrown it away? I didn't know then, my long-ago people forgot to teach me, that light doesn't only shine. It burns.

But if it hadn't burned, would I be here today?

He called it "fire". It danced and shone so happily against the dark blue sky of evening. We walked with it and fell asleep beside it, trusting it would keep us safe. But it grew when we weren't looking, eating dry twigs and leaves until it roared like nothing I'd ever heard before. And the Morlocks came too, running after us on all fours, grayish-white like the fish from the river, with little fires in their eyes. Like us, but not like us. That was the first time I saw any, and they were even worse than I imagined.

So these were the things that took away Keela, our eldest, when she broke her leg last rainy season and couldn't walk anymore. We locked her out, like we do with everyone too old or damaged. We had no choice. If we didn't, they would break into the house and take the rest of us. But she pounded on the door for hours, begging to be let back in, calling all our names, mine too. Until she screamed one last time, and then stopped. The next night her favourite mate locked himself out too, on purpose. He never made a sound.

I dreamed about it so often, but I never saw the Morlocks. Until that night.

I don't remember much of it. I remember running, and fear, and the Thunder Man thrusting his light and his fists in the Morlock's faces. They ran, and they fell, and they came back, and I slowed him down, and he had to carry me. Everything went black behind my eyes, like falling asleep, only worse, because when I woke up, my head spun and my throat was sore. The Thunder Man was stretched full length on the grass, sleeping too.

I was more alone with him like that than if I'd really been alone.

I could hear the fire crackling closer. If I stayed, it would turn us both to dust like leaves, if the Morlocks didn't get to us first. But how could I leave him?

What would he do? Carry me and run. I couldn't carry him even a few steps, but I could run. What else would he do? Fight. Could I do that?

Then I heard rustling behind me, and my feet stopped listening to my head. I ran. But I ran _towards _the fire, not away from it, and I grabbed a burning branch and carried it away with me. In case I should have to fight.

I wish I could tell you that I was being clever, like the Thunder Man. I wish I had stopped to remember how different he was, that he could take care of himself better than anyone, and so it wasn't as bad to leave him behind as if he had been one of us. I wish I had known that bringing fire back to my people would change the way of things forever. But I didn't think. I crashed through the forest like a lightning bolt, one long loud scream trapped inside my throat, and didn't stop for a moment until I reached home.

Then I noticed that my hand was red and painful, and I dropped my fire. It landed on the stone steps and did not spread beyond its branch. It had almost destroyed me, but I could not let it go out, not when it was all I had left of my Thunder Man. I fed it with dry grass and curled up next to it. It was not long until morning came.

I woke up to Liana leaning over me with eyes like rain puddles. She hugged me, kissed my burned hand, and dropped tears into my face, washing away the dirt. Then she held her hand out to the fire.

"Don't touch that!" I said.

"What _is_ it?"

"Oh, my sister, if I only knew … "

I looked for the Thunder Man. He would explain better than I could. He knew so much more. Where was he?

He was in the forest. I had left him to the fire and the Morlocks.

"What happened to you?" they asked. "How did you survive? What did you do to your hand? Where is that man who got you into so much trouble?" They asked more questions in those days than I had heard in my whole lifetime put together. But I couldn't answer. I lay by my fire and could not say a word.

I had promised never to leave him.

I couldn't eat. I could barely swallow water. I only moved to feed my fire and go to the bathroom. They must have thought I was broken, because they kept me outside on the staircase for two nights and two days. Only the Morlocks never came for me. Either because they were afraid of me as someone who knew fire, or – I have to face the possibility – because they had already eaten.

On the third night, Liana and Caden carried me back inside. That, of all things, made me cry into their shoulders until I had no tears left, and finally tell them everything.

"You did everything you could," said Liana, stroking my hair.

"But not everything he could have done," I sobbed. "He would have saved us both."

"You saved yourself. That's the important thing."

"No. I ran because I was afraid."

"Anyone would have been afraid."

"But I don't want to be!"

I understood something then which I had been missing my whole life. "I hate being afraid," I told them, sitting up straight on my pillows. "Don't you? Don't you think we should _do _something, like the Thunder Man, instead of hiding away every night behind our doors and letting our old ones be taken?"

Caden gasped and put his hands over his mouth, but Liana's eyes gleamed.

"What do we do?" she asked.

"We keep the fire alive," I said. "I will show you."

I never saw my Thunder Man again, but Liana believes, and I believe too, that we do not know the whole story. If anyone could survive that, he could. He might come back. And if he ever does, whether or not I, my children or even my children's children are still alive, he must be told that I believed in him to the last. Also, he must be told that I am sorry I could not save him the way he saved me.

I do not know if our plans will work, or if the Morlocks will prove cleverer than we are and destroy us all for good. But if we do not fight to protect what matters most – each other – we might as well die now, because our lives will have no meaning.

You can call me stupid, even crazy, but there are those who agree with me, and we will not give up.


End file.
